Bummer, Dude

What better time than in the middle of a huge freaking snowstorm than to forget about what's going on outside the window and reminisce about the good old days? Or the old days, anyway. Today, let's look back at sophomore year of high school.

Ah, 1995. The Year of the Dancing Itos. It was my first year of high school, even though I was a sophomore. The way I understand it, there wasn't enough room for all the students, so they shipped the freshman off to the junior high. It was my first year in the graphic arts program. I didn't know it at the time, but it turned out that by taking vocational classes, my junior high friends had no choice but to invoke the time-honored high school caste system. Thus began my three year stint as a social leper. Eh, you know what they say: whatever doesn't kill you, leaves you socially and emotionally crippled. On the plus side, we didn't have to take gym.

There were twenty or so students that signed up for graphic arts, but only two ended up staying with the program through graduation. I was one of them, the other was a girl named Valerie. Valerie eventually started dating one of the juniors that helped us through that first year. They dated and broke up on alternating weeks. On one of the weeks they were dating, he must have felt that I was getting a little too close to her. Valerie was in all my classes, and we talked all the time, but nothing was going on, I swear. And it's not because of her uncanny resemblance to Steve Perry.

First of all, I'm not the type of guy that would try to get in the way of a relationship. And anyway, it seemed like we had too much in common. (Except for the smoking, and that's another red flag right there.) You don't want to go out with someone that's so similar it's like you're dating yourself. Not to mention I was still so wrapped up in that Danielle girl that any other girl could have ripped their shirt off and threw herself at me and I wouldn't have noticed.

But her boyfriend wasn't privy to any of this information. He just saw us talking on a regular basis and that was all he needed. So one day he walked into class, and without saying a word, kneed me in the man parts and walked away. I stood there for a few seconds before collapsing sideways to the floor. I could taste blood in my mouth. That was a new kind of pain.

The rest of the juniors were generally much more easy-going. They were a cool bunch of people, and we all got along really well, but they weren't exactly the best influences impressionable young minds could have.

Near the end of the year, the fire alarm went off every day. This went on for over a week, around lunchtime every day. Probably a senior prank. It got so bad that the school held an assembly to address the situation. They said it's serious buisness; every time the alarm is pulled the fire department has to come to the school. They warned that if it happened again, the person who did it would face expulsion.

The next week a new kid came to town. He moved here from Nebraska. I don't think anyone even knew his name, everyone simply called him Nebraska. The weird thing about Nebraska was that he dressed, spoke and generally acted like a surfer dude. I'll have to go check my fifth grade project on the fifty states, but I don't remember reading anything about Nebraska having a coastline. What was he surfing? The amber waves of grain?



Maybe it was the whole displaced surfer in the heartland thing, but the juniors got a kick out of him. He started to hang out with them. I don't know what it was that they said, but they somehow convinced him to pull the fire alarm. He must have thought it was some kind of rite of passage or something, so he did.

The school, In order to catch it's wolf-cryer, had little paint packets installed in each of the alarms that were rigged to go off when pulled. So when he pulled the alarm, he was sprayed with blue paint. Obviously, the kid that's walking around looking like a smurf exploded on his face is the culprit. They caught him and he got expelled on the spot.

Poor Nebraska. He wasn't even in school for a week. No one ever saw him again. Bogus.